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No, not that Ornette but French singer Ornette here joining bass clarinettist Denis Colin’s six-piece on a Nino Ferrer-themed songbook album. A “remote cousin” of the bandleader’s the Franco-Italian singer-songwriter Ferrer who died in 1998 was jazz-influenced with a romantic heart-on-sleeve pop style, Colin’s band with its slacker surfy-jazzy style, trumpeter Antoine Berjeaut sleazy and evocative on ‘La désabusion’ for instance, drawing this out to transform the core sound into a still more jazz and rock-inflected hybrid. Univers Nino certainly scores heavily on bohemian atmosphere, and Colin’s spoken word intro to ‘L’arbre noir’ is just one highly effective key moment on what is a heartfelt and engaging hommage. SG
_{Denis Colin and Ornette, above}